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速度: First Golden Goose Awards Honor Ideas That Hatched Unexpectedly
速度1: Martin Chalfie thought the Golden Goose Award was a hoax at first. But now that he knows what it is, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist from Columbia University says that receiving the award this Thursday in a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., will be "a highlight" of his career. Intended to showcase researchers who pursue oddball topics that eventually lead to significant health and economic benefits, the awards were created by a coalition of science organizations (including AAAS, publisher of ScienceInsider) as a playful rejoinder to the "Golden Fleece Awards" awarded by the late Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who frequently blasted government-funded basic research as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Three groups of researchers will receive the first round of Golden Goose awards this week. The group that includes Chalfie, Osamu Shimomura, and Roger Tsien are being honored for their Nobel Prize-winning work on green florescent protein (GFP), which comes from bioluminescent jellyfish. They helped develop GFP into a tool now used widely in cell and molecular biology to track gene expression. Tsien and Chalfie worry that, in a worsening budget climate, political pressure could grow to cut funding for the kind of basic science that led to the GFP work. The Golden Goose is designed to persuade policymakers to avoid that outcome. But Tsien, admitting cynicism, suspects that the award is just "preaching to the choir." Still, Chalfie hopes it will serve as a reminder to scientists and politicians that many of the biggest discoveries in science are joyful surprises: "We shouldn't be so narrow in our seeking," he says. (262)
速度2: Charles Townes, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the laser technology we now use in everything from CDs to the Internet, is another award winner. He says that many people, including professors, told him he was wasting his time when he first started trying to amplify waves of radiation into a continuous stream. The third group of awardees, Jon Weber, Eugene White, Rodney White, and Della Roy, owe their discovery of a new kind of bone graft to curiosity, serendipity and scuba diving. Weber, a marine geologist, was studying the chemical composition of coral when he found that Eugene White, a scuba diver who was working with electron microscopy at the time, was also interested in coral. Using an electron microscope, they discovered that coral has a complicated interior system of pores. Eugene's nephew Rodney White, then a medical student at Pennsylvania State University (PSU), found that this architecture is ideal for blood vessels to grow around in the absence of bone. Della Roy, also at PSU, later found a more durable, naturally occurring material from which to form bone grafts using the coral's structure as a scaffold. Many discoveries occur "far beyond the imaginations" of people who start out investigating something obscure, Chalfie says. "These accidents happen all the time," he says. "If we're lucky, we realize that we should be paying attention to them." (229)
Studies of Motor Proteins, Liver Transplants Win Researchers 2012 Lasker Awards 速度3: This year's Lasker Awards honor researchers who unraveled how the cell's motor proteins work and others who paved the way for liver transplants. The awards, announced this morning, are the most prestigious U.S. prize in biomedical research. The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation award for basic medical research goes to Michael Sheetz, 65, of Columbia University; James Spudich, 70, of Stanford University; and Ronald Vale, 53, of the University of California, San Francisco. Starting in the 1970s, their laboratory studies first of a spindly alga called Nitella and, later, of giant squid axons allowed the researchers to probe the proteins that move themselves or other proteins along the cell's internal skeletal network. They also discovered a new cytoskeletal motor protein, kinesin, that walks along filaments known as microtubules. The work revealed how molecular machines allow cells to move and muscles to contract. These studies have pointed toward new potential drugs for cardiac disease and cancer. Roy Calne, 81, of the University of Cambridge, and Thomas Starzl, 86, of the University of Pittsburgh share this year's Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for studies of liver transplantation. Starting in the late 1950s, initially with work on dogs, Calne and Starzl overcame obstacles such as the liver's complex vasculature and pioneered the use of drugs to prevent the immune system from rejecting the transplant. As a result of their work, in 1983 U.S. medical experts accepted liver transplantation as a medical procedure. Tens of thousands of people are alive today because they received a transplant for diseases such as cirrhosis or a blocked bile duct. "The extent to which we succeeded vastly exceeded my expectations," Starzl said in an interview on the Lasker Foundation Web site. A third prize for special achievement in medical science goes to geneticists Donald Brown of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Baltimore and Tom Maniatis of Columbia University. The two are honored for their research on genes and molecular cloning and for promoting technology and supporting young scientists. The awards, to be made on 21 September in New York City, include a $250,000 honorarium. The Lasker award is sometimes a prelude to a Nobel Prize in medicine—81 Lasker laureates have gone on to receive that award.
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速度4: ScienceShot: Bird Brains Show Their Fear of Faces
Crows don't forget a face—especially one they're afraid of. Now, images of the birds' brain activity reveal what happens neurologically when they see a familiar face. Researchers from the University of Washington donned identical masks and captured 12 wild American crows. The scientists kept the birds in captivity for a month and fed them while wearing a different, "caretaker" mask. Afterward, the team showed the birds humans wearing the two different masks and monitored the crows' brain activity using positron emission tomography. The "threatening" mask the researchers wore to capture the birds activated brain regions associated with fear, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The caretaker mask worn to feed the birds, on the other hand, activated another set of regions associated with reward and motivation. These results suggest that American crows, like humans, distinguish faces by combining visual information with preexisting memories. (151)
速度5: ScienceShot: The Bluest Fruit
Don't let the iridescent blue of this tiny African fruit fool you: It's neither tasty nor nourishing and contains no pigments to extract. Instead, the vivid sparkle of Pollia condensata comes from the interaction of light with the fruit's skin, which contains layers of microscopic, rod-shaped fibers of cellulose. Stacked like spiral staircases, the rods in the fruit's epidermal cells are spaced at slightly different intervals. Depending on the distance between the rods, the spirals reflect different colors. Most reflect blue light, but others reflect different parts of the visible spectrum, producing a pixelated rainbow. The overall effect is a metallic blue brighter than any yet described in a biological material, researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While animals like butterflies and peacocks produce iridescent color using layers of chitin, iridescence is almost unheard-of in plants. The fact that P. condensata produces rainbows of color by layering cellulose in sophisticated patterns is an exciting example of convergent evolution between plants and animals, says biologist Beverley Glover at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. The fruit's coloration may have evolved to capitalize on birds' attraction to sparkly objects, she speculates, or to trick them into eating something that looks like a blueberry without going to the trouble of actually making juicy flesh. (220)
越障:
You need a game plan
Scientific careers are not like the board game Monopoly. In Monopoly, the rules are clear and it’s relatively easy to succeed; in fact you get $200 just for hanging in there long enough to pass “Go” on your way to the next round. But in science, it often seems there are no definite rules and there’s no guaranteed payoff for advancing to the next training round: Ph.D., postdoc, second postdoc—then what? To succeed in science, you need to have a game plan. This is especially true in the current research environment.
Challenges facing today's doctoral trainees For scientists, finishing a Ph.D. or postdoc and automatically moving on to a research-faculty position is no longer the norm. In fact, the share of all U.S. science and engineering doctorate recipients working in academe dropped from 55% to 44% between 1973 and 2008; 1 that percentage includes postdocs, staff scientists, research and teaching faculty, and administrators. Within academe, the proportion of scientists employed in tenured or tenure-track positions has also declined ( see Table 1 ), likely reflecting a growth in postdoctoral, staff scientist, and other non–tenure-track slots. And with a growing population of talented trainees poised to enter the job market, the competition for sought-after academic jobs is tough. The good news is that, just like in Monopoly, there are a multitude of options from which scientists can choose when deciding on a career, and it is not uncommon for Ph.D.-level trainees to pursue nontraditional paths. 2 But identifying the job that is right for you—whether in academe or beyond—takes work, and competing successfully for that job warrants a new approach to career planning. The recent focus on innovative, interdisciplinary, translational, and collaborative science—coupled with an array of new scientific tools and techniques—means that graduate students and postdocs need to master new skill sets to compete successfully for research positions both within and outside academe. The challenges are no less for individuals pursuing careers away from the bench, where employers may place a greater emphasis on an applicant’s “transferable” skills—such as leadership, management, and communication—than on their scientific and technical expertise. Such skills are difficult to acquire, and to document, during academic training.
Planning for success Navigating this new science careers game board can be difficult; a single strategy will not work for everyone. Although each Ph.D. scientist brings different characteristics to the career game, too rarely do we take time to analyze those individual characteristics to help formulate a plan for our careers. We should do it more often. There is a body of literature that underscores the value of deliberate career planning. This research finds that people who develop and implement strategies to pursue career-specific goals achieve greater career success as measured by salary, promotions, and level of responsibility. 3 They also report greater career satisfaction and rate themselves as more successful than their peers compared to those without career plans. 4 A nationwide study of 7600 postdoctoral researchers found that postdocs who developed training plans with their advisers at the start of their appointments reported greater satisfaction, published more papers, and experienced fewer conflicts with those advisers. 5
Introducing myIDP To help you develop your plan, we have created myIDP, an interactive, Web-based career-planning tool based on the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s (FASEB’s) Individual Development Plan for Postdoctoral Fellows. 6 7 Supplemented by the articles in this series, myIDP will help you identify the career goals that are right for you and develop a step-by-step plan to reach those goals. Anonymous unpublished polls conducted by FASEB in 2009 reveal that postdocs and mentors find IDPs beneficial. The majority of postdocs who developed an IDP reported that it helped them assess their skills and abilities and identify the skills they would need to advance their careers. One respondent noted that it helped “not just to decide on a goal, but to have that goal in mind all the time.” Mentors reported similar benefits for their postdocs, and both groups found the IDP to be helpful for facilitating communication about postdocs’ career goals. According to one investigator: “The IDP helped me guide my postdocs toward experiences that would benefit their own career objectives. It allowed them to better tailor their experiences toward their career paths.” Graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco, reported similar beneficial effects.
Getting started Constructing an IDP is a four-step process with myIDP. The first step is to evaluate your own skills, values, and interests. The second step is to use this self-assessment as a guide for exploring and evaluating career opportunities in your field and, ultimately, identifying your preferred career, as well as an alternative option that you think you’d be happy with. Step three is to set some specific goals to prepare you for the career paths to which you aspire. After discussing these goals and outlining strategies with your primary mentor, it’s time to put the plan into place. You do this in step four. myIDP is designed to help you with each of these steps. It includes exercises to guide you through the self-assessment process, and it will help you determine which of 20 scientific career paths best fits your skills and interests. For each career path, there is an extensive list of resources in the form of articles, books, and professional organizations, which you can scrutinize to gain a better understanding about careers you are unfamiliar with. Finally, there is a tool to assist you in setting and achieving your goals. Throughout the process, you will be able to store your progress on the myIDP Web portal—your information will be kept private, viewable by only you and those you wish to share it with—and you can request automated reminders to help you keep on top of your deadlines. Our goal is to help you gain stronger self-awareness, identify resources and strategies, and create your own game plan for identifying, attaining, and succeeding in the career that is right for you. (1003) |
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